RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for storing data on multiple hard drives which work together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is split into individual ones via virtualization software. In either case, the very same info is kept on all drives and the key benefit of using this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also boosts the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is performed on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synced between the hard drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors mean that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types could differ.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info saved on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. If one of the disks fails, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the data which will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the rest of the drives as well as the info from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of each and every file properly and to confirm the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the info which you upload to your shared hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your Internet sites within a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least one of the disks is used for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the data that is duplicated to a new drive if one of the drives in the RAID stops working because the content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in case a hard drive stops functioning, the system could switch to a different one instantly without service disruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content that you upload on our cloud web hosting platform along with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to validate the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers work in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is used for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the information that will be cloned on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the correct info is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disks operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of unexpected hardware failure.